Winter's Mark
by sticksandstones713
Summary: Krystal Blair used to be a normal girl. Or what she thought was normal anyway. But apparently never being cold in your life isn't that common... And neither is shooting ice out your hands when you get angry. Follow Krystal as she explores the joy of friendship and family. (Crappy summary I hope I can change this thing later...)
1. Chapter One: Strange Beginnings

**A/N: Okay, here we go. First real written story. O sweet Muse, Letteth Me-eth Finish it! This is a **_**really**_** long chapter (seven pages double spaced) but I need to get all this information in the first one so I can start the plot in the next chapter.**

Chapter One- Strange Beginnings and Terrors in the Night

I guess this all started when I was eight. Me and my dad lived in a small house in The-Middle-of-Nowhere (Valdez), Alaska. I loved that house. It was two stories and very cozy. There were three fireplaces, one in the living room, another in his room, and one in my room. Seeing as we were so far north that it was always winter, except for about three months where it was summer. (We didn't have a spring or fall, not really. It went from fifty degree weather to snowing within a week.) Dad always had his and the living room fireplace going. I hated turning mine on, and I always complained about the heat when I was in the living room.

I guess I should have noticed that that was strange…

My dad did, but he never said anything.

He always checked my temperature, as a kid I just thought he was worried about me getting sick from the cold, though it never happened. I had once ran out in a foot of snow wearing only my pajamas and stayed out there for an hour before he woke up. He rushed me straight to our town clinic that was about an hour away only to be told that I was in perfect health. Though the nurse was just as surprised as my father since I was 'ice cold'. That always confused me, I felt fine. I was never cold so how come they all thought it was odd?

Well I know now…

That happened when I was six, but like I said the real trouble began when I was eight. Things… _changed _when I was eight. I was a little girl who was used to blank, bleak, solid repetition. I was home schooled by my father and my baby-sitter, Silvia, who watched me while my dad was at work. We lived so far out of town that the only time I saw others was when my dad took me shopping with him, which wasn't often since he normally did it on his way home. So when everything started changing I was not ready for it. It felt strange and weird and… off. And they changed so fast… One day my father was bringing home this woman he had met at the store(one of the many times I wasn't aloud to tag along), and the next they were married and she was moving in with her five year old daughter. My father was so happy but, he also seemed nervous and a bit scared. Silvia said he was only worried about I would feel about April and Fleur moving in. Like my father I was incredibly excited about having a mother and baby sister, but things didn't turn out as we all hoped.

We made a bit of an odd looking family, my father and I sharing his coloring of platinum blond hair and blue eyes and April and Fleur having pretty chocolate brown hair and green eyes, though my eyes were more grey then my dad's and Fleur's eyes were more hazel then her mom's. April never seemed like the wicked step-mother type and Fleur was very nice. But for the first time in my life I had to deal with people I didn't really know on a regular basis. It was the clash of two households and while most things went well together, such as April's love of telling fairy tales about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, and my dad's love of mythology as bedtime stories, not all things were agreed on very easily.

The first issue was rooming arrangements. April and Daddy of course shared his room ("It's just what mommies and daddies do, dear," said Sylvia when I asked her why I wasn't going to sleep with my daddy and Fleur with her mommy.) And so Fleur and I were supposed to share my room. I was fine with this at first. My room was big enough for another person and at first it seemed really exciting. I was fine with sharing my toys, with getting rid of some to give her more room, and even painting my room a light purple because she didn't like blue and thought it was "a boy color! Bleh, why did you paint it this icky color Krystal?" None of this was an issue, they were all sacrifices I was more then willing to make for my new little sister.  
But then she went to far.

She wanted to keep on the fireplace. _All the time_. At first I was kinda able to deal with it. I wore shorts and T-shirts around the house, when it got too hot I sat outside in the chilly air, I slept with no blankets and kept the window I slept next to open, just a little bit, so Fleur wouldn't notice. But it was still always _way too warm._ I tried to talk Fleur into only having it on during the day (when I was allowed to be outside in the cold) and keeping it off during the night, but she said that it was so cold during the night she could see her breath when the fire wasn't going. (That was an over-exaggeration, that had only happened once.) But April and Daddy agreed that we were to leave on the fire, so I stopped sleeping in my room and slept in the living room where I put out the fire as soon as they all went to bed. April said I wasn't allowed to do that either, since I needed to sleep in my own bed in my room.  
That was probably the first time I had gotten mad…

I yelled at her and told her that the heat made me feel sick, she said I was over-exaggerating and that if I would just get used to it I would be a lot healthier then I am. (Once again, my health was perfect. I just hated the heat.) I then started ranting about how if I wasn't allowed to sleep without the fire going that I would just sleep outside. That made her angry too and soon we were arguing with each other. Daddy and Fleur quickly came downstairs to see what was going on.

"Stephan!" she had screamed. "Explain to your daughter why she can't sleep in the snow, because she sure isn't understanding me!" Daddy came forward to calm her down.  
"You can't tell me what to do! You're not my mother!" I yelled back, angry that my father was going to side with her and not me. This caused them both to freeze and look at each other. April stepped forward, looking much calmer then she had just been.  
"I know I'm not your real mother, Krystal. But I would like you to see me as _a_ mother for you," she said as she walked towards me.  
"NO!" I had shouted.

I wonder how things could have changed if I had calmed down…

I felt something strange radiating from my hands. I recognized it as the comforting chill I got from being outside, only it wasn't comforting. It had a bitter sting to it and left my hands feeling a bit numb. I looked down in confusion and saw something that made me scream.

My hands were covered in ice.

The scream made the ice travel further up my arms and I could feel the temperature in the room go down. Daddy and April both gasped in shock and Fleur screamed. Daddy started shaking his head and was mumbling something under his breath that sounded like "She warned me about this." April backed away and grabbed Fleur. Daddy came forward, holding out his hand towards me, to comfort me.

"No!" Frost ferns formed at my feet and grew across the floor and up the wall. "No, Daddy! Don't I- I don't want to-" I started crying. As soon as the tears came out they iced over and dropped and shattered to the floor. He nodded at me, coming as close as he could but staying away from the ice that was forming on top of the frost.  
"Just calm down Krystal, just calm down and it will stop. You won't hurt anyone. Just calm down, don't feel the anger. Let it go and the ice will stop."

"_Just calm down. Don't feel the anger. Don't feel the sadness. Hide it away. Let it go." _They all became a motto over the years. I started wearing gloves, long sleeves, boots, and pants at all times. Apparently if my skin is covered the ice doesn't work. We found that out when I was nine. Fleur and I was playing in the snow one day, April still insisted that I 'gear up' even though we all knew why the cold never bothered me. Fleur and I were building a snowman and she tripped over a snow-ledge and started crying because she hurt her knee. I got really worried and helped her back inside. April started fixing her up quickly but I was still worried that she was hurt. I began to take off my glove but, as soon as it was off, my ice blew all over the wall, causing Fleur to scream again. I quickly pulled the glove back on and the ice melted quickly in the (overly) warm house.

For a while this was a magnificent discovery, but as I got older the magic got more powerful. It got to the point where I just stayed in my room, my dad had gotten an expansion built on the downstairs after the **Incident** so I didn't accidentally freeze Fleur while I slept. Of course, they had said it was to give me privacy, since I was "a growing girl after all." But I could see the fear in their eyes… To help me cope April had gotten me lots of books and regularly got me more from Valdez's Public library. By the time I was ten I had read the entire children's section (not including those baby books of course). Silvia stopped coming over to watch over me since I was old enough to watch myself while Dad and April were at work and Fleur was at school. I was still home schooled because Dad and April were scared I would loose control and hurt someone, but now it was an online course and they had said they trusted me to do my school work, though April still looked over it all when she got home.

Everything seemed… okay for a while. But one day I could hear my dad and April talking in the living room, it was late and I was supposed to be asleep. I had been reading _Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix_ for the third time and since the walls were so thin I could every word.

"Stephan, I know that it's not her fault but it still scares me. What if she hurts Fleur by accident? What if she hurts one of us? What if she hurts herself? Didn't you say there was a camp where kids like her go?"  
I still remember the fear that gripped my heart at that. Now that I know what she was talking about it makes much more sense, but as a kid who had read countless World War Two books the word 'camp' seemed a lot more sinister in that context.  
"Yes, but April she's still so young… She's only ten. Her mother told me that when they go there they don't always come back. Sometimes they choose to stay and sometimes…"  
And of course that certainly didn't cure the idea of a concentration camp. By then I had my pressed firmly against the wall, not bothering to care about the icy frost ferns that grew from the touch.

"But, you said so yourself. When the powers start coming then so do the monsters! She'll be safer there. They can help her with her powers, train her to protect herself, and then she can come home! But we're putting all of us at risk by keeping her here."  
"But she's so young. I don't want to lose my daughter already, April. She doesn't know what she is yet, that's enough to keep them away."  
They were quiet for a minute and I pressed my ear against the wall even more, and the ferns grew more.  
"If you're sure Stephan, but she does need to go soon, or else she might…"  
"I know… just… just not yet, okay?"  
"Okay, not yet. Let's get to bed it's late."  
I didn't pull away from the wall until I heard the familiar clopping on the stairs. When I did I noticed that my entire room was iced over by atleast two inches and that it was snowing.

**A/N: Phew, that took a bit. But now I'm super excited to start it! Review, comment, hell even flame if you want, I'll just have little Krystal here freeze them out ;) I know I made April come off really 'evil step-mother'-ish but, keep in mind this is in the point of view of a little kid whose life got turned upside down when she got a step-mom and sister.**


	2. Chapter Two: Decisions, Decisions

**A/N: Well here we go! I'm glad that some of you seem to like it! With the last chapter I was going for the thing that they do in lots of movies, where they have the narrator talking and the it fades into the actual story. So yeah this chapter won't be written the same way. If it bothers anyone then I can go back and edit the first one to fit the same style.**

Chapter Two: Decisions, Decisions

Krystal felt fear clench her heart as she turned away from the frozen wall and slid down into a sitting position.

They wanted to get rid of her…

They wanted to send her away…

They were really, truly, actually _scared _of her…

She felt like she was crying but she couldn't feel any tears. She lifted her hand to brush away the ghost tears when felt she several streaks of ice under her eyes. She pulled them off easily and stared at the strange icicles in her hand.

"Who can blame them?" she mumbled to herself, throwing the icicles in the corner of her room. Krystal curled up around herself and willed herself not to cry anymore, she didn't want to see those icicles again. They were only proof of her strangeness.

And what else had they said?

Monsters?

Where the monsters people like her?

Did _they _see her as a monster?

Krystal looked down at her hands, they were ungloved, as they always were when she was in her room. Because, despite of the things her powers could do, she _liked _them. She thought the ice that formed was beautiful. She felt a draw to the snow and ice. Sometimes… sometimes she was angry that her family didn't feel the same way.

Maybe she was a monster. Maybe she was putting them in danger. What if people like her did come, and they were angry that her parents hid her away. What if they hurt them? What if they _killed_ them?

"What if _I _kill them?" she gasped out in terror.

She wanted to dismiss the idea. Mark it as something that she wouldn't and couldn't ever do. But she's been mad before. She's scared them and hurt them before.

Once, Fleur had been angry that Krystal got to be home schooled while she had to go to normal school. She had been having a rough time with a few of the girls in her class and had begged April over and over again to be home schooled like Krystal. When April had said no and left for work, Fleur started yelling at Krystal for being 'everyone's favorite!'

"_I'm not anyone's favorite! I don't even want to be home schooled! I don't get to talk to anyone and I'm alone all day!" Krystal yelled back._

"_Of course you are! They let you have anything you want because of your powers! If I had powers like yours too, then they would let me do anything I want! "_

"_They don't let me have anything I want! I want to go to school, talk to people, be _normal!_" Krystal could feel her anger surging and building but, she tried to push it back down.  
"Why? Why would you want to be _normal?!_ Don't you get it? They like you _more _because of your powers! Because you're special and, I'm just a normal kid! I want to be special too!"_

_Krystal turned around and pulled at her hair, trying to keep her emotions under control, but she could feel them bubbling and raging inside her.  
"Don't _you_ get it? They don't like me for my powers! If anything, they _fear me _for them." Fleur was silent and Krystal braced herself against the kitchen counter, taking deep breaths to calm herself down, ignoring the bitter sting in her hands. When she felt like she had them back under control she turned around.  
"Look Fleur, I'm-" she stopped and screamed. _

"_Fleur!" _

_Her little sister was covered in a thin sheet of ice that silenced her and rooted her to the floor.  
Krystal grabbed the ice sculpture and dragged it to the hot fireplace in the living room. She laid it down in front of it and ran upstairs to get as many blankets as she could. When she came back down with several thick blankets Fleur was mostly unfrozen but was shivering terribly. Krystal wrapped the blankets around her younger sister and quickly backed away from her, scared that she might freeze her again.  
"I'm- I'm so sorry Fleur."_

Krystal buried her head in her hands, feeling the tear-cicles form again. She really _was_ dangerous. She could and has really hurt them. The longer she was here, the more she put them in danger. She couldn't do it anymore, she couldn't put them in harms way. Krystal knew what she had to do.  
That didn't mean she liked it.  
She tore off the tear-cicles again and jumped to her feet. Any normal person would have slipped on the now four inch thick ice, but Krystal clearly wasn't normal. She walked towards her closet and held out her hand, forcing the ice that sealed the door to crack and break apart. She grabbed the frozen door and forced it open, and grabbed the large hiking bag inside from when she was younger and she and her father would hike the Alaskan hills during the summer. She grabbed coats, sweaters, sweatshirts, and jeans as well as anything else that would help dull her powers, such as earmuffs, scarves, countless gloves, and thick wooly socks. She shoved them all in her bag, after dressing herself in the heaviest of coats, sweaters, jeans, socks, and boots. She realized she still had a large amount of room left in her bag so she quietly went into the kitchen to pack up food.

She packed up all the pre-cooked canned food that she could find. Tomatoes, green beans, corn, carrots, soups, and even a can or two of pie filling found their way into the large dark blue bag. She then flash-froze a jug of milk and tossed that in as well. She tried to pick up the now heavy bag, only to realize that it was much too heavy for her to hike long distances with. With a heavy sigh she put back the milk, pie filling, and half of the canned vegetables in the bag. She tried the bag again and found it to be much lighter and manageable.

Then, as quietly as possible she left the kitchen and went into the living room and to the front door. She grasped the door knob and looked back at the far-to-warm house. She had never left this house for more then a couple of days. She had never been outside of Valdez, Alaska before.  
And now… She was never coming back.  
She reached her hand up and felt one last tear-cicle. She carefully took it off and placed it on the window sill next to the door. She placed her hand on the window and willed it to frost over, leaving two words for her family that would find her gone in the morning.

_Good Bye._

**A/N: Ah… Oh that felt heavy… All the angst! Don't worry this is the last 'sad' chapter ( I think…) Jack was going to come in this one but I think it would have ruined the mood of it, so he's coming in the next one!  
**

**To Amaryllis: Well that is **_**quite**_** the possibility! You know I could have **_**maybe**_** have a crossover planned for the sequel. ;) When that happens I don't want it to seem like I threw it in last minute, but this story at least is just a RotG story. The most that will happen is a small hint to the fact, like the camp one, but nothing outright until the next one.**


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